I went back to work. In the last year I’d only worked nine weeks, two short contracts. Now I had a contract through the end of June, 2024 with the possibility to extend by another six months. The certainty felt good.

Since COVID I’d worked contracts ranging from five weeks to three months, but I had no problem stringing together enough work. I turned down a fair amount too, and I could be choosy about what I did or take a month or two off and know the work would still be there.

The kind of work I did during the pandemic is called messaging and positioning—it’s the core set of marketing content companies use for their websites, ads, pitch decks, campaigns and so on. (Tag lines, copy blocks, brand narratives.) I loved doing it but knew it was time I did something else.

I went down some rabbit holes trying to decide what’s next. I hired a career coach and worked out my values, strengths and core purpose. I was glad I actually pulled some of that out in the job interviews I had recently; I rattled off my strengths and really tried to pitch myself in a way that didn’t sound like I was. But they expect you will—and this is a group of marketing and sales people, so what the hell.

I asked them what attribute they needed most for the job and when they answered I turned that into a spiel about my strengths (since my strengths matched so nicely to what they needed!). And that felt good. You can pay hundreds of dollars for a coach (and maybe you should) or you can just go access some free online tools that help you clarify your values and strengths and get a lot of the same benefits.

I still had some old wounds from a past job I left now almost 10 years ago, which seemed ridiculous. I even had the occasional dream about it. Trying to scan my access card but not being allowed into the building. Reliving my last day there.

Work can really get in your head and that’s because of the way we identify with work, I think. Maybe you put too much of yourself in it and if you get let go or things go badly, you take it personally.

I think I may have overreacted to how badly things went in my last job and that’s what led me to contracting. I liked the idea I could make almost twice as much without any artifice around being “part of the work family” or any crap like that. It was purely transactional and I liked that. I also performed a lot better because I knew at any moment they could let me go. I didn’t mind that, it made me lean in more. I made my clients really happy and that made me feel good. It’s this “pleaser thing,” probably.

When I was up in Alaska a few years ago I learned about this phenomenon on trees called a burl. The burl looks like a knob on the tree, it’s kind of how trees deal with stress: like they concentrate all the stress in that one area. I think we do that too, you just can’t see the burl on people. Maybe we’d be happier if we could send all our stress somewhere and keep growing around it.

They mailed me a new laptop and I had fun setting it up. I cleaned my desk off and stared at the screen. Maybe now I could get back to a more predictable life for a time, do some more of the writing I liked to do, catch up on some living and do good work.

Lily and I made plans to go camping on the coast first, and I set my start date for another week out. I should probably cut my hair but decided I won’t.

Categories: identity, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, work